with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them.... They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all my holy mountain.'--Isaiah lxv.
'He that killeth an ox is as he that slayeth a man.'--Isaiah lxvi., 3.
'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.'--Matt. ix., 7.
'It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything
whereby thy brother stumbleth.'--Romans xiv., 21.
'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble I will eat no flesh for
evermore, that I make not my brother stumble.'--1 Cor. viii., 13.
The verse from Isaiah is no fanciful stretch of poetic imagination. The
writer, no doubt, was picturing a condition of peace and happiness on
earth, when discord had ceased and all creatures obeyed Nature and lived
in harmony. It is not absurd to suppose that someday the birds and
beasts may look upon man as a friend and benefactor, and not the
ferocious beast of prey that he now is. In certain parts of the world,
at the present day--the Galapagos Archipelago, for instance--where man
has so seldom been that he is unknown to the indigenous animal life,
travellers relate that birds are so tame and friendly and curious, being
wholly unacquainted with the bloodthirsty nature of man, that they will
perch on his shoulders and peck at his shoe laces as he walks.
It may be said that Jesus did not specifically forbid flesh-food. But
then he did not specifically forbid war, sweating, slavery, gambling,
vivisection, cock and bull fighting, rabbit-coursing, trusts, opium
smoking, and many other things commonly looked upon as evils which
should not exist among Christians. Jesus laid down general principles,
and we are to apply these general principles to particular
circumstances.
The sum of all His teaching is that love is the most beautiful thing in
the world; that the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all who really and
truly love. The act of loving is the expression of a desire to make
others happy. All beings capable of experiencing pain, who have nervous
sensibilities similar to our own, are capable of experiencing the effect
of our love. The love which is unlimited, which is not confined merely
to wife and children, or blood relations and social companions, or one's
own nation, or even the entire human race, but is so comprehensive as to
include all life, human and sub-human; such love as this marks the
highest point in moral evolution that human intelligence can conceive of
or aspire to.
Eastern religions have been more explicit than Christianity about the
sin of killing animals for food.
In the _Laws of Manu_, it is written: 'The man who forsakes not the law,
and eats not flesh-meat like a bloodthirsty demon, shall attain
goodness in this world, and shall not be afflicted with maladies.'
'Unslaughter is the supreme virtue, supreme asceticism, golden truth,
from which springs up the germ of religion.' _The Mahabharata._
'_Non-killing_, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and
non-receiving, are called Yama.' _Patanjalis' Yoga Aphorisms._
'A Yogi must not think of injuring anyone, through thought, word or
deed, and this applies not only to man, but to all animals. Mercy shall
not be for men alone, but shall go beyond, and embrace the whole world.'
_Commentary of Vivekananda._
'Surely hell, fire, and repentance are in store for those who for their
pleasure and gratification cause the dumb animals to suffer pain.' _The
Zend Avesta._
Gautama, the Buddha, was most emphatic in discountenancing the killing
of animals for food, or for any other unnecessary purpose, and Zoroaster
and Confucius are said to have taught the same doctrine.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: See _Sartor Resartus_, Book I., chap. xi.: Book III., chap.
vii. Also an article by Prof. W. P. Montague, Ph.D.: 'The Evidence of
Design in the Elements and Structure of the Cosmos,' in the _Hibbert
Journal_, Jan., 1904.]
IV
THE AESTHETIC POINT OF VIEW
St. Paul tells us to think on whatsoever things are pure and lovely
(Phil. iv., 8). The implication is that we should love and worship
beauty. We should seek to surround ourselves by beautiful objects and
avoid that which is degrading and ugly.
Let us make some comparisons. Look at a collection of luscious fruits
filling the air with perfume, and pleasing the eye with a harmony of
colour, and then look at the gruesome array of skinned carcasses
displayed in a butcher's shop; which is the more beautiful? Look at the
work of the husbandman, tilling the soil, pruning the trees, gathering
in the rich harvest of golden fruit, and then look at the work of the
cowboy, branding, castrating, terrifying, butchering helpless animals;
which is the more beautiful? Surely no one would say a corpse was a
beautiful object. Picture it (after the axe has battered the skull, or
the knife has found the heart, and the victim has at last ceased its
dying groans and struggles), with its ghastly staring eyes, its
blood-stained head or throat where the sharp steel pierced into the
quivering flesh; picture it when the body is opened emitting a sickening
odour and the reeking entrails fall in a heap on the gore-splashed
floor; picture this sight and ask whether it is not the epitome of
ugliness, and in direct opposition to the most elementary sense of
beauty.
Moreover, what effect has the work of a slayer of animals upon his
personal character and refinement? Can anyone imagine a
sensitive-minded, finely-wrought _aesthetic_ nature doing anything else
than revolt against the cold-blooded murdering of terrorised animals? It
is significant that in some of the States of America butchers are not
allowed to sit on a jury during a murder trial. Physiognomically the
slaughterman carries his trade-mark legibly enough. The butcher does not
usually exhibit those facial traits which distinguish a person who is
naturally sympathetic and of an aesthetic temperament; on the contrary,
the butcher's face and manner generally bear evidence of a life spent
amid scenes of gory horror and violence; of a task which involves
torture and death.
A plate of cereal served with fruit-juice pleases the eye and
imagination, but a plate smeared with blood and laden with dead flesh
becomes disgusting and repulsive the moment we consider it in that
light. Cooking may disguise the appearance but cannot alter the reality
of the decaying _corpse_; and to cook blood and give it another name
(gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood
that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous
being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not
been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly
smell of mortifying flesh,--or fried eggs and bacon!
Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted,
relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man,
before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before
his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for
unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appetite for Nature's
sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. Now true refinement can only
exist where the senses are uncorrupted by addiction to deleterious
habits, and the nervous system by which the senses act will remain
healthy only so long as it is built up by pure and natural foods; hence
it is only while man is nourished by those foods desired by his
unperverted appetite that he may be said to possess true refinement.
Power of intellect has nothing whatever to do _necessarily_ with the
_aesthetic instinct_. A man may possess vast learning and yet be a boor.
Refinement is not learnt as a boy learns algebra. Refinement comes from
living a refined life, as good deeds come from a good man. The nearer we
live according to Nature's plan, and in harmony with Her, the healthier
we become physically and mentally. We do not look for refinement in the
obese, red-faced, phlegmatic, gluttonous sensualists who often pass as
gentlemen because they possess money or rank, but in those who live
simply, satisfying the simple requirements of the body, and finding
happiness in a life of well-directed toil.
* * * * *
The taste of young children is often cited by vegetarians to demonstrate
the liking of an unsophisticated palate, but the primitive instinct is
not wholly atrophied in man. Before man became a tool-using animal, he
must have depended for direction upon what is commonly termed instinct
in the selection of a diet most suitable to his nature. No one can
doubt, judging by the way undomesticated animals seek their food with
unerring certainty as to its suitability, but that instinct is a
trustworthy guide. Granting that man could, in a state of absolute
savagery, and before he had discovered the use of fire or of tools,
depend upon instinct alone, and in so doing live healthily, cannot _what
yet remains_ of instinct be of some value among civilized beings? Is not
man, even now, in spite of his abused and corrupted senses, when he sees
luscious fruits hanging within his reach, tempted to pluck them, and
does he not eat them with relish? But when he sees the grazing ox, or
the wallowing hog, do similar gustatory desires affect him? Or when he
sees these animals lying dead, or when skinned and cut up in small
pieces, does this same natural instinct stimulate him to steal and eat
this food as it stimulates a boy to steal apples and nuts from an
orchard and eat them surreptitiously beneath the hedge or behind the
haystack?
Very different is it with true carnivora. The gorge of a cat, for
instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse, or a piece of raw flesh,
but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man could take delight in pouncing
upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking
the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with
carnivorous instinct, but the very _thought_ of doing such a thing makes
him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his
'mouth water,' and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit to
gratify taste. A table spread with fruits and nuts and decorated with
flowers is artistic; the same table laden with decaying flesh and blood,
and maybe entrails, is not only inartistic--it is disgusting.
Those who believe in an all-wise Creator can hardly suppose He would
have so made our body as to make it necessary daily to perform acts of
violence that are an outrage to our sympathies, repulsive to our finer
feelings, and brutalising and degrading in every detail. To possess fine
feelings without the means to satisfy them is as bad as to possess
hunger without a stomach. If it be necessary and a part of the Divine
Wisdom that we should degrade ourselves to the level of beasts of prey,
then the humanitarian sentiment and the aesthetic instinct are wrong and
should be displaced by callousness, and the endeavour to cultivate a
feeling of enjoyment in that which to all the organs of sense in a
person of intelligence and religious feeling is ugly and repulsive. But
no normally-minded person can think that this is so. It would be
contrary to all the ethical and aesthetic teachings of every religion,
and antagonistic to the feelings of all who have evolved to the
possession of a conscience and the power to distinguish the beautiful
from the base.
When one accustomed to an omnivorous diet adopts a vegetarian regime, a
steadily growing refinement in taste and smell is experienced. Delicate
and subtle flavours, hitherto unnoticed, especially if the habit of
thorough mastication be practised, soon convince the neophyte that a
vegetarian is by no means denied the pleasure of gustatory enjoyment.
Further, not only are these senses better attuned and refined, but the
mind also undergoes a similar exaltation. Thoreau, the
transcendentalist, wrote: 'I believe that every man who has ever been
earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best
condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food,
and from much food of any kind.'
V
ECONOMICAL CONSIDERATIONS
There is no doubt that the yield of land when utilized for pasturage is
less than what it will produce in the hands of the agriculturist. In a
thickly populated country, such as England, dependent under present
conditions on foreign countries for a large proportion of her food
supply, it is foolish, considering only the political aspects, to employ
the land for raising unnecessary flesh-food, and so be compelled to
apply to foreign markets for the first necessaries of life, when there
is, without doubt, sufficient agricultural land in England to support
the entire population on a vegetable regimen. As just said, a much
larger population can be supported on a given acreage cultivated with
vegetable produce than would be possible were the same land used for
grazing cattle. Lieut. Powell quotes Prof. Francis Newman of University
College, London, as declaring that--
100 acres devoted to sheep-raising will support 42 men: proportion
1.
100 acres devoted to dairy-farming will support 53 men: proportion
1-1/4.
100 acres devoted to wheat will support 250 men: proportion 6.
100 acres devoted to potato will support 683 men: proportion 16.
To produce the same quantity of food yielded by an acre of land
cultivated by the husbandman, three or four acres, or more, would be
required as grazing land to raise cattle for flesh meat.
Another point to note is that agriculture affords employment to a very
much larger number of men than cattle-raising; that is to say, a much
larger number of men are required to raise a given amount of vegetable
food than is required to raise the same amount of flesh food, and so,
were the present common omnivorous customs to give place to
vegetarianism, a very much more numerous peasantry would be required on
the land. This would be physically, economically, morally, better for
the nation. It is obvious that national health would be improved with a
considerably larger proportion of hardy country yeomen. The percentage
of poor and unemployed people in large cities would be reduced, their
labor being required on the soil, where, being in more natural,
salutary, harmonious surroundings the moral element would have better
opportunity for development than when confined in the unhealthy, ugly,
squalid surroundings of a city slum.
It is not generally known that there is often a decided _loss_ of
valuable food-material in feeding animals for food, one authority
stating that it takes nearly 4 lbs. of barley, which is a good wholesome
food, to make 1 lb. of pork, a food that can hardly be considered safe
to eat when we learn that tuberculosis was detected in 6,393 pigs in
Berlin abattoirs in one year.
As to the comparative cost of a vegetarian and omnivorous diet, it is
instructive to learn that it is proverbial in the Western States of
America that a Chinaman can live and support his family in health and
comfort on an allowance which to a meat-eating white man would be
starvation. It is not to be denied that a vegetarian desirous of living
to eat, and having no reason or desire to be economical, could spend
money as extravagantly as a devotee of the flesh-pots having a similar
disposition. But it is significant that the poor of most European
countries are not vegetarians from choice but from necessity. Had they
the means doubtless they would purchase meat, not because of any
instinctive liking for it, but because of that almost universal trait of
human character that causes men to desire to imitate their superiors,
without, in most cases, any due consideration as to whether the supposed
superiors are worthy of the genuflection they get. Were King George or
Kaiser Wilhelm to become vegetarians and advocate the non-flesh diet,
such an occurrence would do far more towards advancing the popularity of
this diet than a thousand lectures from "mere" men of science. Carlyle
was not far wrong when he called men "clothes worshippers." The
uneducated and poor imitate the educated and rich, not because they
possess that attitude of mind which owes its existence to a very deep
and subtle emotion and which is expressed in worship and veneration for
power, whether it be power of body, power of rank, power of mind, or
power of wealth. The poor among Western nations are vegetarians because
they cannot afford to buy meat, and this is plain enough proof as to
which dietary is the cheaper.
Perhaps a few straightforward facts on this point may prove interesting.
An ordinary man, weighing 140 lbs. to 170 lbs., under ordinary
conditions, at moderately active work, as an engineer, carpenter, etc.,
could live in comfort and maintain good health on a dietary providing
daily 1 lb. bread (600 to 700 grs. protein); 8 ozs. potatoes (70 grs.
protein); 3 ozs. rice, or barley, or macaroni, or maize meal, etc. (100
grs. protein); 4 ozs. dates, or figs, or prunes, or bananas, etc., and 2
ozs. shelled nuts (130 grs. protein); the cost of which need not exceed
10c. to 15c. per day; or in the case of one leading a more sedentary
life, such as clerical work, these would be slightly reduced and the
cost reduced to 8c. to 12c. per day. For one shilling per day, luxuries,
such as nut butter, sweet-stuffs, and a variety of fruits and vegetables
could be added. It is hardly necessary to point out that the housewife
would be 'hard put to' to make ends meet 'living well' on the ordinary
diet at 25c. per head per day. The writer, weighing 140 lbs., who lives
a moderately active life, enjoys good health, and whose tastes are
simple, finds the cost of a cereal diet comes to 50c. to 75c. per week.
The political economist and reformer finds on investigation, that the
adoption of vegetarianism would be a solution of many of the complex and
baffling questions connected with the material prosperity of the nation.
Here is a remedy for unemployment, drink, slums, disease, and many forms
of vice; a remedy that is within the reach of everyone, and that costs
only the relinquishing of a foolish prejudice and the adoption of a
natural mode of living plus the effort to overcome a vicious habit and
the denial of pleasure derived from the gratification of corrupted
appetite. Nature will soon create a dislike for that which once was a
pleasure, and in compensation will confer a wholesome and beneficent
enjoyment in the partaking of pure and salutary foods. Whether or no the
meat-eating nations will awake to these facts in time to save themselves
from ruin and extinction remains to be seen. Meat-eating has grown side
by side with disease in England during the past seventy years, but there
are now, fortunately, some signs of abatement. The doctors, owing
perhaps to some prescience in the air, some psychical foreboding, are
recommending that less meat be eaten. But whatever the future has in
store, there is nothing more certain than this--that in the adoption of
the vegetable regimen is to be found, if not a complete panacea, at
least a partial remedy, for the political and social ills that our
nation at the present time is afflicted with, and that those of us who
would be true patriots are in duty bound to practise and preach
vegetarianism wheresoever and whensoever we can.
VI
THE EXCLUSION OF DAIRY PRODUCE
It is unfortunate that many flesh-abstainers who agree with the general
trend of the foregoing arguments do not realise that these same
arguments also apply to abstinence from those animal foods known as
dairy produce. In considering this further aspect it is necessary for
reasons already given, to place hygienic considerations first.
Is it reasonable to suppose that Nature ever intended the milk of the
cow or the egg of the fowl for the use of man as food? Can anyone deny
that Nature intended the cow's milk for the nourishment of her calf and
the hen's egg for the propagation of her species? It is begging the
question to say that the cow furnishes more milk than her calf requires,
or that it does not injure the hen to steal her eggs. Besides, it is not
true.
Regarding the dietetic value of milk and eggs, which is the question of
first importance, are we correct in drawing the inference that as Nature
did not intend these foods for man, therefore they are not suitable for
him? As far as the chemical constituents of these foods are concerned,
it is true they contain compounds essential to the nourishment of the
human body, and if this is going to be set up as an argument in favor of
their consumption, let it be remembered that flesh food also contains
compounds essential to nourishment. But the point is this: not what
valuable nutritive compounds does any food-substance contain, but what
value, _taking into consideration its total effects_, has the food in
question as a wholesome article of diet?
It seems to be quite generally acknowledged by the medical profession
that raw milk is a dangerous food on account of the fact that it is
liable from various causes, sometimes inevitable, to contain impurities.
Dr. Kellogg writes: Typhoid fever, cholera infantum, tuberculosis and
tubercular consumption--three of the most deadly diseases known; it is
very probable also, that diphtheria, scarlet fever and several other
maladies are communicated through the medium of milk.... It is safe to
say that very few people indeed are fully acquainted with the dangers to
life and health which lurk in the milk supply.... The teeming millions
of China, a country which contains nearly one-third of the entire
population of the globe, are practically ignorant of this article of
food. The high-class Hindoo regards milk as a loathsome and impure
article of food, speaking of it with the greatest contempt as
"cow-juice," doubtless because of his observations of the deleterious
effect of the use of milk in its raw state.
The germs of tuberculosis seem to be the most dangerous in milk, for
they thrive and retain their vitality for many weeks, even in butter and
cheese. An eminent German authority, Hirschberger, is said to have found
10 per cent of the cows in the vicinity of large cities to be affected
by tuberculosis. Many other authorities might be quoted supporting the
contention that a large percentage of cows are afflicted by this deadly
disease. Other germs, quite as dangerous, find their way into milk in
numerous ways. Excreta, clinging to the hairs of the udder, are
frequently rubbed off into the pail by the action of the hand whilst
milking. Under the most careful sanitary precautions it is impossible to
obtain milk free from manure, from the ordinary germs of putrefaction to
the most deadly microbes known to science. There is little doubt but
that milk is one of the uncleanest and impurest of all foods.
Milk is constipating, and as constipation is one of the commonest
complaints, a preventive may be found in abstinence from this food. As
regards eggs, there is perhaps not so much to be said, although eggs so
quickly undergo a change akin to putrefaction that unless eaten fresh
they are unfit for food; moreover, (according to Dr. Haig) they contain
a considerable amount of xanthins, and cannot, therefore, be considered
a desirable food.
Dairy foods, we emphatically affirm, are not necessary to health. In the
section dealing with 'Physical Considerations' sufficient was said to
prove the eminent value of an exclusive vegetable diet, and the reader
is referred to that and the subsequent essay on Nutrition and Diet for
proof that man can and should live without animal food of any kind. Such
nutritive properties as are possessed by milk and eggs are abundantly
found in the vegetable kingdom. The table of comparative values given,
exhibits this quite plainly. That man can live a thoroughly healthy life
upon vegetable foods alone there is ample evidence to prove, and there
is good cause to believe that milk and eggs not only are quite
unnecessary, but are foods unsuited to the human organism, and may be,
and often are, the cause of disease. Of course, it is recognized that
with scrupulous care this danger can be minimized to a great extent, but
still it is always there, and as there is no reason why we should
consume such foods, it is not foolish to continue to do so?